Boxer’s DUI record could be a symptom
Some hot August notes:
The first time County Chief Executive Francine Boxer was cited with DUI, in October 2001, she wrote to the newspaper explaining that she and her sisters had been celebrating her mother’s 87th birthday and that “I allowed myself to get carried away drinking wine.”
Boxer got “carried away drinking wine” to the tune of a blood-alcohol level of 0.22 percent. The legal limit is 0.08 percent.
The second time Boxer was cited with DUI, last Saturday, the WSP calculated her blood-alcohol level at 0.15 percent. And that was after sleeping for an unknown time in the back of the vehicle.
In both incidents, after cooperating with authorities, Boxer was allowed to leave the scene with a designated driver. This drives most of us nuts. Boxer and authorities tell us her position had no influence on how she was treated. They say, however, that she didn’t have to be booked into jail because she is well-known and not a flight risk. But most people busted for DUI aren’t a flight risk either, they just aren’t well-known. Most people busted for DUI are booked into jail.
Boxer wrote how humbling the first citation was. But apparently not humbling enough. Flight risk or not, there’s something to be said for going through the truly humbling process of being handcuffed, transported to the police station, fingerprinted and booked into jail. Like on TV.
Boxer may have been a first-time offender in 2001, but she was not a first-time drinker who got carried away with some wine. To be honest, a blood-alcohol level of 0.22 percent would leave most people passed out cold, or worse. To be kind, getting caught again implies a problem.
In this case, it seems the Monopoly card should read: “Do not pass Go. Go directly to treatment.”
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Spokane hosts Bloomsday and HoopFest every year. The city has and will again host the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball playoffs. And of course, in 2007, Spokane will host the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.
So now is the time for our fine city to make a bid to host ESPN’s X Games. It would be the perfect yang to the figure skating’s yin. Spokane is such a skateboard /motocross kind of place, it would be perfect. Water events could be held on Lake Coeur d’Alene; we don’t mind sharing the wealth. The only sticking point would be where to hold the surfing competition. Maybe the Spokane River could be turned on full blast and they could surf there. Let’s think big.
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“Top Gun” was showing on network TV. So I sat through it, because I somehow missed this 1980s pop culture icon. Yes, the aerial scenes were cool and fun to watch. But, as a stereotypical female viewer, I stuck with it so I could see the love scenes, or scene. Something about hearing that Berlin song “Take My Breath Away” for a hundred years made me think it would be worth it.
But when Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis finally get ready to take their breath away, you see them kiss, you hear the song for a second, and the next thing you know, she’s reading the cute paper- airplane note he left her in the morning.
I was ready to cry censorship. You can see every form of violence on TV, real and imagined. You can see every conceivable surgery on every imaginable body part. You can see a person tied up, covered in maggots and other creepy crawly things and shoved in a morgue drawer (“Fear Factor”). But you can’t see Maverick and Charlie celebrate their Top Gun love?
Well, after a quick Internet check, it seems the scene was probably cut more for time than taste. The scene was added well after the movie was finished, when they decided they needed a love scene. McGillis’ hair color was already different for a new role, so the scene was shot in blue tint. According to reviewers, the scene wasn’t particularly steamy.
So I didn’t miss much. But in a country that takes HBO’s “Sex and the City” and syndicates it for network TV by taking out the “Sex,” I had to wonder why that scene was cut.
Yes, I know. If I want the full-fledged love scenes, I should just order HBO. But in a singularly impotent protest against Comcast, I refuse to upgrade until they add ESPN2 to the basic cable package. Sometimes you just have to take a stand, even if nobody notices.